


Lucid Nightmare

by Danko_Kaji



Category: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy X-2
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Danko_Kaji/pseuds/Danko_Kaji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They lived, they lied, they hoped, and they died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucid Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Livejournal Community FF_Fortnightly. Lucid Nightmare won under the Final Fantasy X/-2 Category for the June 2011 Annual Drabble Contest.
> 
> Quotes in bold are from a speech by Martin Luther King Jr; "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" - Linkin Park, album: A Thousand Suns.
> 
> [Lucid Nightmare - Dramatic Reading by _heaven_monument_](http://youtu.be/x40jT8U0WD4)

**I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight**

“Sin is eternal.” Yunalesca prays before them and re-welcomes the inevitable with open arms. “Hope is... comforting. It allows us to accept our fate, however tragic it might be.”

A walking dead man blasts from the past.

 _“No! Where is the sense in all this?! Braska believed in Yevon’s teachings and died for them! Jecht believed in Braska and gave his life for him!”_

“Yevon’s teachings and the Final Summoning give the people of Spira hope. Without hope, they would drown in their sorrow.”

 **Because my conscience leaves me no other choice**

~

 _“Mother, no! I don’t want you to become a Fayth!”_

 _“There is no other way. Use me, and defeat Sin. Only then will the people accept you.”_

 _“I don’t care about them! I need you, mother! No one else!”_

 _“I don’t... have much time left...”_

“He [Seymour] was always alone– half Guado, half man. I wanted to give him the strength to live by himself. And so I became a Fayth. But... because I let him taste power, he began to thirst for more. He was not satisfied with my Aeon. He wanted more. More power.”

“And he found Sin.”

~

 **A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war**

“It might be a hopeless campaign, and it might mean defying Yevon... but the Crusaders _and_ the Al Bhed, they’re doing their best to defeat Sin. They want to rid Spira of Sin forever!”

 _How many died today? People die, and Yuna dances. When will she stop dancing? When will it stop? Yuna won’t stop dancing – not until Sin is gone._

 **This way of settling difference is not just**

Fiends invade Home, Guado hunt for heathens; lambs for the slaughter. Tears are shed for the dead in light of a far-away explosion.

 **This business of burning human beings with napalm**

Kilika receives the brunt of Sin’s wrath worst; the big, bad bully blows wooden houses into smithereens, robs parents of children, and children of parents, and families of siblings.

Long-lost cousins are scattered across the globe, soul-searching, striving to fulfill their callings. Low population, high-level chaos, romances short and sweet, and marriages fast and multiple. Survival of the fittest, a complex web of dependence and kindness built on a holy system.

Yu Yevon; hypocrisy in disguise.

~

 **Filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows**

 _“The High Court of Yevon is now in session. To those on trial: believe in Yevon and speak only the truth.”_

 _"Enlightened rule by the dead is preferable to the misguided failures of the living."_

 _"Life is but a passing dream, but the death that follows is eternal."_

 _"Men die. Beasts die. Trees die. Even continents perish. No matter how many Summoners give their lives, Sin cannot be truly defeated. The rebirth cannot be stopped. Yet the courage of those who fight give the people hope. There is nothing futile in the life and death of a Summoner."_

 _“Never futile... but never ending.”_

Foreboding words haunt Tidus's mind; as he awaits his ultimate sentence, Tidus wonders aloud, "Why is it... everything in Spira revolves around people dying?" His prison mate and fellow Guardian speaks for an immortal, morbid mystery.

"Ahh, the spiral of death. Summoners challenge the bringer of death, Sin, and die doing so. Guardians give their lives to protect their Summoner. The Fayth are souls of the dead. Even the Maesters of Yevon are Unsent. Spira is full of death. Only Sin is reborn, and then only to bring more death. It is a cycle of death, spiraling endlessly."

~

 **Of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane.**

Darkness. Pyreflies. Ear-splitting screams of pain, agony, and despair. Soldiers singing in chorus death’s melody. They play along to the chords of murder and insanity, guns drawn at point-blank.

 **Of sending men home from the dark and bloody battlefields–**

Destruction-incarnate vaporizes flesh, blood, and bone from the face of the earth, leaving survivors to bleed, suffer, and slip away on a corpse-littered beach. Machina have tumbled in defeat, and Sin retreats to prowl the waters and protect a myth still hailed as sacrosanct.

 **physically handicapped and psychologically deranged**

~

“Sin is Jecht.”

 **Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.**

“He came here for you. As long as he is Sin, Jecht will keep killing. He wanted to show that to you. So you would kill him. He wants you to stop him.”

 **Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.**

“He is no longer human. But then... I felt something of Jecht there in that shell, couldn’t you? You must have felt him when you came in contact with Sin.”

 **Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.**

“Ieyui Nobomeno ~ Renmiri Yojuyogo ~ Hasatekanae...”

The singing stopped; Calm-shattering quakes reverberate beneath the lake and signify Sin’s poisonous presence. Everyone braces themselves as the toxin infects their senses.

 _The song... You were listening, too!_ An upside-down world, neon signs, gravity-defying skyscrapers, a city that never sleeps. _Oh... you homesick, too?_ Blitzballs lie neglected, as does a sea-side house. _That’s not your world anymore. You’re Sin now._ One little boy sits by himself, sad and abandoned, hugging his knees. _Hey, I’m older now, you know?_

Tidus sees his father in his mind’s eye, back turned in timid regard to his son’s hatred of him.

 _I know. You want this to end._

~

 **Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.**

A decade-old memory emerges.

 _“My dream is back in the other Zanarkand. But now I know there’s no way home for me. I’m never going to see my son again. My dream’s never gonna come true. So make me the Fayth.”_

 _“Wait! Sin always comes back. It comes back after the Calm every time! The cycle will continue and your deaths will mean nothing!”_

 _“But there’s always a chance it won’t come back this time. It’s worth trying.”_

25-year-old Auron then falls to his knees, eyes despairing; 35-year-old Auron now slays his inner demon in vain.

“And the cycle went on.”

~

 **Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.**

Ten years later, after tired of living inside a dream, Auron makes his move. Ripples form on the water’s surface. Armageddon swallows the sea and tears the streets. Futures are laid to waste, until they are later reborn under lucid dreaming. Tidus teeters on the edge, fingers slipping off the torn ledge, and his guardian kneels to pick him up, guiding the sun to rise inside the eye of the storm.

 _“Don’t cry.”_

 **Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.**


End file.
